Something in the Dirt‘s Sci-Fi Conspiracy Sees Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead Poke Dry Fun at Filmmaking
This review originally ran as part of our Sundance 2022 coverage.
Poke around online for any amount of time and you’ll inevitably stumble upon a strange corner promoting one oddity or another. Even if you promise only to follow friends on social media, to read trusted sources, to avoid all but the most wholesome memes, strangeness—and those pushing it to make a buck—will find you. That might take the form of an algorithm recommending some flat-Earther nonsense after you looked up a flatbread recipe, or of a random LinkedIn message from a half-remembered co-worker who’s fallen into something that doesn’t call itself a cult but avoids doing so almost conspicuously. And that’s not even touching QAnon, COVID deniers or the History Channel. Capitalized conspiracy surrounds us. Half mock-doc, half sci-fi two-hander, all bone-dry L.A. satire, Something in the Dirt takes a bemused look at those all too happy to exploit phenomena and each other—with the typical small-scale charm of an Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson project.
Delving into their own DIY careers, filmmakers Moorhead and Benson respectively play John, a religious wedding photographer, and Levi, his new bartender bum neighbor, who decide to make a documentary together after seeing a freaky bit of unexplainable floating and shining in the latter’s apartment. Enamored by the levitation and refracting aura of an irregular glassy prism (alongside a swollen closet door that won’t shut into its equation-covered jambs), the pair of oddballs dig into all the strange explanations for what might be going on. Is it geography? Geology? Ghosts? Whatever the case, they naturally also discuss how much a quick-and-dirty doc about their investigation might net them after a sale to Netflix. It’s L.A., after all.
The locale is of paramount thematic importance. It’s enough that it enhances their slapstick escapades as amateur documentarians—fucking around with iPhones, uncharged batteries and full memory cards—and its place in the confined cinema of the pandemic, since it’s mostly shot in and around a single apartment, but it also informs the characters and their ever-branching rabbit hole. Perhaps the supernatural events are intrinsically linked to L.A. city planning, as the town’s always been a hotbed for those like Crowley and Hubbard. Does the locus itself attract weirdos or do weirdos simply flock there, creating a self-fulfilling woo-woo culture? The interpersonal secrets of these particular weirdos leak out over the course of their ridiculous red-pilling, their tumultuous relationship somehow reflected by the potency of the magic in the apartment, revealing dudes desperately using this hunt to fill their empty lives. Multiple takes of cheesy walk-and-talks are hilarious, but still stink of behind-the-scenes sadness. Levi and John, as different as they are, are still all about image—the projection of success rather than its achievement, embodied by Levi investing in his teeth rather than his future…or are those the same thing?